Lu Over the Wall

Outdoor films aren’t what usually come to mind when you think of a relaxing late August outing to keep you cool. But what if the movie is set in a small Japanese fishing village filled with animated mermaids? Lu Over the Wall follows a teenage boy whose passion for making music leads him to a surrealist island populated by merfolk. Though inspired by the anime standard bearer Ponyo, the film deviates from Studio Ghibli’s finessed animation, skewing toward a scrappier art style to deliver its off-the-wall (or should that be over-the-wall?) story. Lu Over the Wall is sure to please the juice-box demographic but promises to be weird enough to capture the interest of older viewers too. And more importantly, who would turn down a trip to an oceanic fantasy-land at this time of the year?